Debts, Trespasses, Sins…??? The Language of Liturgy

by Jim Cunningham

We have done much to update the language of worship to be more inclusive, more contemporary. I was counseled to think of the visitor who has little or no experience in Christian worship – like… print out the Lord’s Prayer! I remember the young adult who asked me, “what is a hymn?” We might add… “Doxology, Gloria Patri, Eucharist, Collect, Sermon, Sacrament, Communion, etc.

Touching the language of the traditional Lord’s Prayer can be an especially explosive issue! Still, many have at least given members the option of “Father, Mother, Creator, Spirit, or some other sacred address. Some have changed or discussed changing “lead us not into temptation” questioning the theology – even the Pope has spoken to this. The congregation I attend is led to read, “let us not fall into temptation.”

I did convince one congregation to move from “debts” to “sin.” Still, what does “sin” mean to those not familiar with church history or tradition?

I wonder how Jesus would word this prayer if alive in our time? Perhaps we should challenge our members to each give this a try. I think the resulting discussion would be most interesting.

I did preach about the Lord’s Prayer as a transitional preacher just before moving to Phoenix in March. I ended the sermon with my contemporary rewrite. I was pleased and impressed with the interest and thoughtful response from many in the congregation. Several shared their own rewrite of the Lord’s Prayer the following Sunday. On my last Sunday, the placemats for lunch were pictures of my ministry and a copy of the Lord’s Prayer version I wrote.

Here is my thinking as of today. I invite you to share your own contemporary rewrite of the Lord’s Prayer.

Sacred Spirit, Creator, the Mystery within all and beyond all.
Your vision for life and creation be realized now.
Give us this day what we need to live fully and faithfully in the moment.
Forgive us when we have been disrespectful,
As we forgive others who have been disrespectful.
Grant us wisdom and strength to resist evil.
We live in your Presence and Love, forever. Amen.

Baby Wisdom

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Our survival in this life is contingent on how we understand our basic needs. Living is the practice of meeting these needs. Our ability to meet those needs changes as we change. We complicate this extraordinarily well throughout our lives.

We have needs.
We come into this world, screaming and demanding .
Those cries from the newborn beckon us to help them survive.
Their cries beg for food, warmth and safety. And so it starts.

We seem to lose the understanding of our own needs as we grow older. We get conditioned in all sorts of ways as we live. The further we get away from the day we were born, the less we seem able to tolerate our own neediness. We judge it.

It hurts my heart when I witness someone embarrassed to admit that they have a need. We cast shame on people for needing and for expressing that need.  Some even taunt others about it. “You don’t have to be such a big baby about it.”

In an effort to be “less of a baby” about it, we begin to push away the awareness that our own needs exist and forget that it’s crucial to have these needs met. We deny our needs and that usually comes out sideways in our living.

We work against our own survival at times because we don’t want to be vulnerable and we don’t want to be rejected. We do not want to have needs that we cannot meet on our own. We want self sufficiency and for others to view us as strong.

So we…
starve ourselves.
…gamble away our security and safety.
… make choices that leave us out in the cold.

And we sprinkle all of that with a nice dose of shame and loneliness.

In our living, we often focus on the weight of need and it can be burdensome. If that’s where we are focused, we miss the true life-affirming part of need.

When we were babies, completely reliant on others, we learned something each time we had a need met: It’s not our needs alone that make us human, it’s the never being alone in our need that truly helps us live.

In our most vulnerable moments, we may desperately want to deny our needs even exist. We may want to hide the evidence of our humanity. I hope we do that less and less as we grow.

And I sincerely hope we will be big babies about it.

Faithful Decision Making – Rising to the Challenge of the Times

by Karen Richter

When Scott and I were first married, we had a friend named Glenn who worked with Scott at Barnett Bank in Florida. Glenn told us one evening about watching a teller at the bank flipping through a large stack of bills… She touched each bill for a fraction of a second and maybe once in the stack she would pull a bill out and put it to the side. These were the bills that she suspected were counterfeit. Actually more than suspecting, she just KNEW – knew from the slight variations of the texture of the paper and ink under the edge of her thumb.  

What does that story have to do with discernment? Discernment is not like that. We very seldom ‘just know.’  Over a person’s lifetime, they make millions of decisions of all shapes and sizes. Over a person’s lifetime, maybe for one of those decisions, they “just know.”

The traditional practice of discernment – faithful decision making – as spiritual discipline owes much to the Catholic Ignatian tradition and to Quaker practices. There’s a history there and much ancient wisdom… but that’s not today’s blog.

Discernment is a practice suited well to the times in which we live. So let’s take a minute to talk about how we might understand these times. So many of us have a gut feeling that there’s something special different unique going on in our churches and institutions. Is it just our imagination or are things truly changing more quickly and more profoundly than in times past? Church historian Phyllis Tickle writes about this idea: that every 500 years or so, the church has a “great rummage sale” in which ideas and notions of the role of the church get all shifty (The Great Emergence, Baker Books 2012). The Protestant Reformation was the most recent of these great transitions (Luther’s theses were posted on Halloween in 1517 – early Renaissance social media LOL). The Reformation was a time in which the authority of the church shifted in a profound way – from the Pope and the hierarchy of the church to the scriptures.

1517… hmmm. Well… TICK TOCK Y’ALL. We’re due for another great rummage sale, and it’s happening all around us. Tickle’s thesis is that the transition in which we’re living now is another change in our source of authority: from the Bible to the Spirit.

Assuming that she’s right*, it behooves us to learn the best ways to hear the voice of Spirit. And that’s what discernment is all about. Spiritual direction is a great setting in which to dive into personal and vocational discernment. I think of direction as a container in which discernment can unfold.

In that container (or in whatever setting we are discerning), there’s an atmosphere of trust.

  • We trust the deep desires of our heart. When we ask discernment questions, we trust that our hearts are already leaning the right way. We trust that God somehow has placed those desires in our hearts.
  • We trust the goodness of Life at a basic level. In this way, we are able to hold our decision lightly… to remain open and receptive to the Spirit’s movement, letting go of our own agenda even if just for a time.
  • We trust our imagination and intuition. We allow our emotions and physical sensations to inform our decision making. My spiritual direction mentor and supervisor Rev Teresa Blythe has this go-to question:  ‘where do you feel this decision in your body?’ It took me a while sitting with this question to grasp what it means.
  • Finally, we trust our community. We lean on one another’s wisdom.

Discernment is entwined with the Cs of our faith journey– commandment, commission, and commitment – and interacts with those concepts around the question of HOW. Discernment is all about the HOW.

  • How do we respond to the commandment of love? What does our call to love look like on the ground, in real life?
  • How do we live into the task before us – our commission to embrace this life and embody grace and peace? What part of this work is ours to do? What tasks have my name on them?
  • How do we sustain the commitment that’s required to build the house of Wisdom?

These are the questions of discernment continually lying before us: as a faithful community, as individuals, as a culture, as a species. May we make decisions that are life-giving. Amen.

*☺ I’m not at all qualified to argue with Phyllis Tickle! Her ideas are given the briefest summary/mangle here. The Great Emergence is a fab overview of church history for lay persons.

When We Go Away

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

I have long thought that the strength of family and friend relationships rely solely on exchanges we all have when we are in the same space, hanging out, talking, being together.

I have come to realize, though, this is only part of sustaining connection. The other large, essential part of relationship happens when we are away from each other.

Loving relationship starts in the most tender parts of our being. Our ability to be authentic and present in relationship is quite reliant on the vulnerability we are brave enough to hold inside of ourselves. Vulnerability often calls on fear as a bodyguard. Fear is such a powerful barrier that locks us in and does nothing to help our precious selves find one another.

What we choose to think about, the offenses we sometimes pick up, the conversations we overthink, the way we perceive our own value to those we love, all determines so much of whether a relationship thrives or suffers. The stories we tell ourselves in the in-between times is what determines if love is cultivated or ruptured.

We rely on connection. We long to be with one another. That homesick ache is that very longing and has been with us from day one. It is the motivating part of our living. The plot twist, though, is that deep connection is not fortified with an “I love you” face to face. The deep, sustaining connection happens later when we are apart. It happens when I replay that “I love you” and choose to believe you meant it.

Attention is the key to creating…

by Jocelyn Emerson

In my last blog I spoke about how we are all source (with a small ’s’) and invited us to really truly own that — to step fully into our power as co-creators and manifestors.  I realize that can be a challenging thing.

We live in a country right now where many of us feel powerless to change the destruction of our values and ethics.  We are witnessing the tearing apart of families seeking asylum here in this country.  We are watching racism rear its ugly head again, and witnessing it being supported by the White House.

We are witnessing and experiencing stronger weather — more tornados, stronger hurricanes, greater frequencies of flooding, volcanos erupting.  Mother Nature is reminding us of what happens when we do not care for Her.

With all that is happening in the outer world, no wonder we feel disheartened and disempowered in our inner world.

But here’s the thing…

When we create change and transformation, it is not by opposing or changing what is already created.  It is by creating what we want independently of what we want to change.  What we want changed, we dis-create, release, let die.

There is an old Cherokee story:

An old grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, “Let me tell you a story.  I, too, at times have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy.  It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die.  I have struggled with these feelings many times.” 

He continued, “It is as if there are two wolves inside me.  One is good and does no harm.  He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended.  He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

But the other wolf, ah!  He is full of anger.  The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper.  He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason.  He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great.  It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.

Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.”

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather’s eyes and asked, “Which one wins, Grandfather?”

The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, “The one I feed.”   
[source]

What we feed is what will grow and manifest.  If we want to change something, we must first stop feeding what we want changed, and then create the new changed thing to feed and feed that.  If we feed justice, compassion, love, beauty and harmony, the opposing forces will atrophy and die because there is no energy flowing into them.  We have done nothing other than direct our attention and creating power to what we want to create!

In creating attention is key.  It is the food that feeds what we create.  Attention includes our focus, our intention, the work we do, our negative or positive thoughts, any self-conversations we have, our fears, and more.  Attention can be positive or negative.

And this is why it is so important that we be conscious of our power to create!  This is why it is so important that we be conscious and aware of our thought patterns.

If we are putting too much negativity toward what we want to create, it will create itself with that energy — and not in the way we desire it to.  Then we will place the blame out there, or use it as proof that our doubt (the negativity we directed at our creation) was correct.  We are stuck in a cycle where we become frustrated creators, and end up feeling powerless to bring what we want into our lives.

If we are aware and conscious and work to feed our creation with positive energy: love, harmony, hope, desire, compassion; it will create itself in a beautiful way.  We will be amazed at what happens.  Confidence will come back into our being.  We will wake up one morning realizing that we are fully standing in our own Power, our own Light.

In both creating experiences, it was our attention that did the creating. The Universe listened and acted to support where our focus was.

This is also why I co-create with Spirit.  Spirit helps to awaken me, to beckon me to recognize my fears, doubts, negative thought forms and patterns.  Spirit invites me to look at them, release them, heal what needs to be healed.  All along, Spirit holds the positive outlook I need until I am able to step fully into it.  When I am ready, Spirit boosts my positivity and amazing things are created.

Co-creation is an invitation to heal and grow as we create.  Co-creation is an invitation to follow the guidance of the One, the Sacred in all that we do.  Co-creation is an invitation to learn to master the art of feeding the good wolf.

Which wolf are you feeding today?  Which wolf do you want to be feeding? ​

My Favorite Spiritual Place!

by Jim Cunningham

I know stress up close and personal. I will not bore you with the details.

My spiritual journey has taught me that when stress becomes a problem it is a spiritual “disease or dis-ease.” Stress is normal to life but stress becomes a problem when I forget the resources God has gifted to me and to all of us. My inspiration of my thinking on this is the quote:

“You are not always free to choose the circumstances in which you find yourself in life, but you are always free to choose the attitude with which you will address the situation” – Victor Frankl

Stress also becomes a problem when I hold onto stress.

Consider the photo above…

I use this multiple times a day but at bedtime it become my “spiritual throne!”

What do I do here…

I consciously choose to “let go” of the physical waste my body no longer needs.

If I could not or chose not to “let go” of this waste, it would create pain, disease, and eventually death.

So, this moment on the “throne” invites me to ask what are the stresses… the fears, the anger, guilt, frustration, pain, anxiety, worry, despair, events, people etc. that I have taken in during the day which if I hold onto it will disrupt my sleep, cause me pain, contribute to disease/dis-ease, or contribute to my death.

God help me let go of all of all this and flush it from my body, mind, and spirit. The key to letting go I have learned is a spiritual gift: forgiveness. I can “hold on” or “let go” and the key to letting go is forgiveness.

When my son died the grieving process required a “letting go.” Therefore I had to forgive to find the healing to go on living… this does not mean forgetting. It was a process not a moment in time. I had to forgive death… forgive God for the reality of death… forgive the overwhelming pain… forgive that the future that would be forever different… forgive those who did not understand my journey, etc.

So, not only do I need to forgive myself, or others, but all that contributes to stress… to forgive cancer, forgive my anxiety disorder I live with, forgive chronic pain, forgive accidents, forgive congested traffic, forgive aging, forgive prejudice, forgive ignorance, forgive fear, forgive divorce, forgive being laid-off/unemployed, and on and on…

I can CHOOSE to hold onto the stress in my life life or I can acknowledge it, forgive it and let it go and live fully in the moment! My choice and my choice alone.

I continue to work at letting go everyday. I have found it to be my path to peace. I am grateful to God for all who have helped me learn and live these important life coping skills.

I welcome your thoughts, reactions, your coping insights.

Learn more about me, and how I help others to let go, in my bio.

This is a test. This is only a test.

by Karen Richter

Is life just one test after another?

Names below have been changed.

Now that my youngest child has hit adolescence, I seem to be harvesting the fruits of telling her since she started school that grades are not important to me. She’s testing my resolve… occasionally deciding that an assignment is not a priority. I’ve mostly stuck to my resolve, reminding both of us that there are more important things in life than 6th grade language arts.

Recently, I confided my struggles to a casual friend, Jenna, and a most interesting conversation ensued. Our tone was lighthearted, but the conversation revealed different ways of relating to life.

KR:  So, I’ve always told my children that learning is very important to me, but grades not so much. Unfortunately, it seems that Molly was listening all this time.

 Jenna:  I have not given Rianne that message… not at all. I tell her that she’s being graded and tested and judged all the time. At school, at home, out in public. You don’t do what you’re told – you’re being graded on that. You have a school assignment – you’re being graded on that. You have an interaction with someone you don’t know at a restaurant – you’re being graded on that. We’re always in every situation being tested.

 Is Jenna right?

Of course she is. Human brains are sorting, difference-measuring, weighing-up machines. Making decisions about people and situations is what we do. It has kept our species alive for many millennia. And we also recognize that we’ve all had experiences when we are told in ways both direct and subtle that we don’t measure up. We’re just not     ___ enough. Not good enough, not smart enough, not handsome enough, not thin enough, not athletic enough, not conforming enough. Our post-modern, hyper individualistic, youth- and wealth-worshiping society doesn’t exactly encourage us to accept ourselves and others just as we are. We do feel as if we are always being tested and being found deficient.

If I had more time in my conversation with Jenna (and if I had been thinking quickly on my feet), I might have said, “Yes, we feel the weight of others’ judgments. But we don’t have to take every opinion with equal weight. We can walk away from expectations and judgments. And more importantly, we need to share with our children the heart-deep conviction that their worth does not depend on the ‘grades’ given by others – EVEN IF those expectations and judgments come from someone they love and respect.”

Also recently, I’m diving deeper into Nonviolent Communication. At the heart of NVC is the idea that every human person has dignity and innate worth and personal agency. Our needs are both important and shared. When we interact in a way that honors human freedom, connections can be made that serve life.

This is an easy connection to my faith. We are called in ways large and small to freedom.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

What does this mean for Molly’s ‘History of Me’ social studies project due this next to last week of school? I don’t know, but I know that she will carry with her this idea that she is of tremendous value NO MATTER WHAT far longer than she will care about her 4th quarter grading report. And for this assurance, no matter how frustrating I occasionally find it, I am grateful.

Finally, what’s an alternative to Jenna’s worldview? How can we relate to the way life is, if not as a gigantic classroom with high-stakes testing? Maybe life is a garden where those planted can simply grow. Maybe Mary was more right than we thought… when she thought Jesus was the gardener (John 20).

Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love: we confess that often we don’t know how to relate to our own freedom or the freedom of others. We confess that sometimes our interactions with our fellow creatures don’t serve this freedom. Help us – open our eyes. We so want to live in grace and abundance. Guard in our hearts this vision of open futures and faith-filled garden paths. We pray in faith and gratitude. Amen.

Opened Minds – Hearts on Fire: Exploring the Easter Stories

by Karen Richter

I don’t know about you, but if I were writing the story of Easter… I would make it Extra. Extra miracles, extra teaching, extra healings, maybe a Big Finish.

I wouldn’t write the stories that we have. Someone told me this past week that the Easter stories just don’t seem that impressive. I concur. Well there are angels and fainting guards and earthquake (Matthew 28!). But walking anonymously down the road, breathing weirdly on people, cooking breakfast… I’ll take a pass.

The other day I made a super-nerdy Easter story matrix. Here’s what I learned:

  • As the gospel tradition moves forward through history (from Mark written about 70 CE to John written just after 100 CE), the Easter appearance stories get bigger: more complex and more weird. Mark’s Gospel originally has only the empty tomb tradition, with some risen vision stories tacked on later like a Holy Post-It note. John’s gospel has six different stories.
  • They’re all different from one another across the 4 Gospels, unlike other Jesus stories of our tradition such as the feeding miracles.
  • In each story, Jesus is somehow different and somehow the same. He’s not easily recognized even by friends, but he retains his Crucifixion wounds. Embodied, but transformed, maybe.
  • All 3 synoptic Gospels have angels at the tomb. This is interesting, since we associate angels with Christmas so much more than with Easter.
  • Jesus doesn’t do any last minute teaching in the Risen Vision stories. There are no “Remember the Beatitudes!” reminders or one last parable to share. For me, this speaks to trust. The disciples will be on their own soon. Easter is graduation day, or maybe confirmation, for them.
  • Jesus doesn’t spend his post-Resurrection time on miracles. The time for loaves and fishes and healing on the Sabbath seems to have passed. John does recount an extra large catch of fish and an extra strong net, but as miracles go, it’s pretty low key.

So if, as time passes, Resurrection stories and experiences expand, becoming more complex and more weird, what are our Easter stories? Maybe – just maybe – the most impressive and exciting Easter stories are yet to come. In Luke 24, the disciples have their hearts burning and their minds opened by their encounters with Jesus. What is our tale of Easter? How will we share our burning hearts and opened minds with the world?

Opened Minds – Hearts on Fire: Exploring the Easter Stories by Karen Richter, Southwest Conference Blog, United Church of Christ

One more Easter observation… Jesus seems to really like fish.

Eastertide Peace to you all.

Why We Need a Spiritual Guide

by Teresa Blythe

While going it alone can be peaceful, even then there are times we need a spiritual guide.

Last week I intended to use the sacred spiral at the Steele Indian School Park in Phoenix as a labyrinth. I entered and began to walk the spiral clockwise because a native friend of mine convinced me that clockwise was the way of nature. My goal was to shed worries and fears moving into the depths of the spiral and feel empowered as I walked out. I didn’t want to offend nature so I veered to the left to work the spiral.

I began in good faith, but instead of deepening along the path to the center, I kept returning to the same starting point, which was frustrating. Surely this was a metaphor for my life. I seem to keep circling around to my same old worries and fears and staying on the surface instead of finding that deeper core where my spirit communes with God’s spirit.

How does this thing work?

Unsure whether I was “doing it wrong” or whether I had entered a spiritual twilight zone, I paused to ask a Native American family at the center of the spiral for directions.

“How many miles have you been walking?” asked the elder. “I don’t know, but I’m puzzled because I’m trying to circle down into the center but I keep returning to the same spot.” They just looked at me and smiled.

“What am I doing wrong? A friend of mine told me always to walk clockwise, as it’s the way of nature.”

A younger member of the family decided to let me in on the secret.

“Well, clockwise may be the way of nature, but this path winds counterclockwise.”

And that, my friends, is why we need guides along the path.

A guide sees what you have not yet seen or are too stubborn to see. (I was sure that spiral would be curling clockwise — big assumption.)

Good guides do not point your faults out until you ask them to. (I’m sure they figured out what was happening long before I asked.)

Listening to your guides and correcting your course rather than beating yourself up for not paying attention or being stubborn is how we grow in awareness. (After all I did round that spiral clockwise at least 3 times before I asked for help.)

Thank you, gracious family at the sacred spiral last week. Whether you realize it or not, you offered me a wonderful spiritual lesson.